1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of database management and, more particularly, to a system and method for tracking and updating financial transaction data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most consumers utilize negotiable instruments such as personal checks to pay for desired goods and/or services. A book of checks (i.e., a check book) typically provides a bound group of sequentially related checks and a register for recording check number, payee, date and amount information relating to utilized checks. While useful in tracking available funds, the check book register provides no information relating to budget goals, application of checks towards particular budget items and similar financial management goals. Similarly, credit cards, debit cards and cash outlays provide no feedback to the user regarding budgetary and other financial management constraint other than “over limit” messages at a retail point-of-sale (POS) terminal, if applicable.
Financial management is regarded as a necessary task to be performed by each household. Unfortunately, since there are many ways to expend financial resources (as noted above), and many necessary expenses coming due at different times of the year (e.g., insurance, property tax and the like) as well as periodically occurring expenses having variable billing amounts (e.g., water, natural gas, communications and the like), coherent financial management strategies are often not practicable. Therefore, it is seen to be desirable to provide a system and method simplifying at least the data manipulation aspects of implementing appropriate financial management tasks.